Something A Little Like Romance
by Tiruneko
Summary: A collection of dark, vaguely romantic one shots based on requests. Mondays at 11:28- She doesn't believe him when he says he's real and she doesn't except gifts from strangers. Cold- I told you once and I'll tell you a thousand times, though you don't need to hear it. I don't feel anything. [Excepting pairing and theme requests, slash and lemon are excepted] Rating may change
1. Mondays at 11:28- MikuxLen

Mondays At 11:28

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-(vauge) Miku/Len-

Warnings: mild violence, gore

Rating: T

Summary: "She doesn't believe him when he says he's real and she doesn't except gifts from strangers."

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To think that they didn't notice would be quite foolish indeed. Even more so, to think they weren't waiting for something to notice would be inviting something dangerous. That's why Miku takes every precaution. She locks her doors twice over, checks her windows three times and she makes sure that her baseball bat is always at hand. Relaxation is a luxury. People like Miku don't have time for luxury.

Everyday has its routine. She wakes up and checks the locks before allowing herself a five minute shower in borderline hypothermia inducing water. Then she checks the locks again before making a pot of coffee and giving yesterday's clothes the ol' sniff test. And then, she checks the locks a final time before heading into the study and getting to work. Getting to the real stuff.

Not the bullshit high school and the basic trials of society and recent trends offers, no, the real life stuff. The violence and the anguish and the danger and the tragedy and the occasional torrid read life affair riddled in pain and drama. Frankly, simplicity is a concept and nothing more. The idea of simplicity is merely a safeguard against the bitter truth of chaos. Chaos is the real mistress to destiny. But Miku doesn't believe in destiny either. Because seriously, who needs to believe in anything anymore? Beliefs are overrated. Belief is another word for trust. The only thing she trusts in is the fact that when she goes to bed, she'll wake up again in the morning. But she's started to even doubt that lately, too.

Another part of the routine is when _that _one comes around. At first Miku thought he didn't exist and completely wrote off anything that it brought with it because she really doesn't need her subconscious to make her anymore friends. She ends up killing them all anyways. But this one didn't sit passively in the corner and begin to weep dizzying shades of red when Miku spared it a glance, this one showed up at her door one night with a message from a client.

Since when did her clients bring her messages in person? She guessed this one wanted to see what she looked like. That was why Miku opened the door part way and the first and_ only _thing to cross over the threshold was the barrel of a shotgun.

_That _one didn't seem too fazed but whatever. It hadn't started weeping yet. She guessed it'd be a good idea to hold off on killing it. It just meant three days of vision-blurring agony and another hole in the plaster of her mother's apartment.

It gave her a look that might have been something of disgust—it's too hard to tell now a days when someone's mad or not, she's reached the point where every face sort-of blurs together and every expression is exactly the same and might as well be a cardboard circle—and handed over a manila envelope.

"Kaito sends his regards," It said in a gruff, accented voice before a pause and another, "you look like literal hell."

"Oh," Miku grunted, sounding more like a croak than anything. She motioned with the barrel of the gun for It to put the envelope on the ground so she could slide a bare toe out of the door and slip the envelope inside the apartment lit only by LED Christmas lights. It didn't move and continued to watch her with a curious expression (that's all she could really make out of it, anyways). Then, as an added measure, Miku managed to get out a raspy and harsh sounding question. "Are you going to start crying on me, too?"

It blinked. "I might end up crying if you shoot me in the place where you have that gun pointed," It quipped. Miku gave It a glance over before nodding curtly. "You don't look like I thought you would."

Miku blinked. "Oh. Sorry to disappoint," she stated dryly, about ready to rip her hair out of her head. Talking to them was out of the question and she was half-convinced It would start crying that brilliant and blinding color soon anyways if she indulged It long enough.

"You reek like coffee and smoke."

Miku responded out of an impulse that spurred her on instantly. "Because I drink coffee and smoke." She actually recoiled in surprise at the fact that the words had bubbled up out of her lips and with a panicked yelp that sounded more like a rodent being strangled, she withdrew her gun and kicked the door shut with a loud bang and threw herself into a panic trying to lock up the door again in her very precise pattern.

Every Monday night since, at exactly eleven twenty eight at night, her doorbell rings and there is a lone cigarette and a cup of McDonalds coffee on her doorstep. Miku finally started taking the items a week later after her classic poke-with-baseball-bat test to make sure the items weren't somehow rigged with explosives that would detonate inside of her intestines.

You can never be too careful with gifts from strangers, after all.

This morning Miku's nightmares rip her from her bed with an anguished cry and a body racking shudder of pure, unadulterated terror. She glances down at the tallies on her arm in permanent marker. Monday.

With a sharp intake of breath Miku jumps out of the freezing cold bed to an even colder hallway to an even _colder _shower. As the biting cold water washes away the numbing terror of the images of them and It that whisper in her dreams she comes to a thought that makes her skin tingle with relief that warms her like nothing else.

It's not real. If It's not real It can be killed.

Just another hole she'll put in the plaster.

At ten thirty she's waiting by the door. And at eleven twenty eight she watches It show up and leave the things. And at eleven thirty she's standing over the coffee, letting the cigarette burn down to the filter and a bizarre, neon red warmth drift over her feet and cover the Goosebumps of relief with something else.

This time when she goes to lay down for the night she forgoes the one belief she allows herself. You can never be too careful with gifts from strangers, after all. Especially the ones that come in pretty plastic cups with whipped cream on top.

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	2. Cold- MikuxKaito

Cold

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-Miku/Kaito-

Warnings: break up sadness, mild language

Rating: T

Summary: Kaito thought he could fix his girlfriend. He thought he could be the one to change her... but some things just can't be repaired. Especially if they weren't there to begin with.

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"What the _hell _is your _problem_?!" the blue haired man shouts, pulling frustrated at the collar of his shirt, exasperated and obviously tired if the lines under his eyes are anything to go by. The girl that stands before him, hardly more than a few months his senior turns her head to the side as if she hadn't been interested in the conversation at all to begin with. She tips her chin up the slightest bit to that flickering bulb in their apartment and the faintest of sighs passes through her lips.

She shrugs, the strap of a thin black tank top slipping the rest of the way off her pale shoulder, showing moon-white skin flawless and smooth. A messy bun of teal hair on top of her head shifts with the slight movement and her eyes, as lifeless as a tree amidst a snowstorm, an empty grey find his. The mascara and eye liner surrounding them are flawless without the slightest of errors. She hasn't applied any lipstick in a while, yet her lips are still pale and full. Her expression is a blank slate and it only serves to enrage the man further. He stands, shaking and fuming as she sits in the barstool over their kitchen counter with a wine glass in her hand.

"I told you, Kaito. I told you again and again but you didn't listen. This is on you," she says in a voice just as cold as the air around them. She likes to keep the apartment freezing, always has. He's starting to think now it's a reflection of her personality rather than her cheapness.

"No, you told me _shit._"

"Language," she snaps, interjecting with an unspoken threat.

"Screw your stupid rules and goddamn barriers!" He shouts.

"Volume," she corrects robotically, bringing the wine glass to her lips, parting them, flushing it down, down…

The man casts his eyes downwards. A white cat trots out of the bedroom, slinking around the man and to the woman in the kitchen, rubbing up against her ankles. She glances down at it and huffs with what the man would have assumed to be disgust if he hadn't known any better. She, however, isn't capable of something as complex as disgust.

He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly just as she sets the wine glass down, watching him and waiting with an expression devoid of any life. "Miku, when you… when you told me, back then that you… you don't _feel _anything…" He stops, not knowing how to finish without making a complete fool of himself. He clenches his fists in anger.

"You thought it was your duty to fix it," she explains calmly, as if stating that it had rained earlier. No, even that would have had more inflection. The man visibly winces at the words. "I cannot be changed, Kaito. I told you once, I'll tell you a thousand more times though I doubt I have to. I don't feel anything."

He can feel himself beginning to cry, the hot sheen of tears slithering underneath the flesh of his eyes and slowly worming its way up his throat, making it hard to breathe. He will not cry, not in front of her.

She stands, pulling the long black pin out of her hair as she does. She drops it with a small _clack _to the hardwood and saunters in her usual manner, with her shoulders back and head as high as ever until she's standing toe to toe with the man who had once screamed _I love you _so many times in a night he had made himself hoarse. She places a hand in the center of his chest and he nearly collapses right there. They do not make eye contact.

"Kaito," she says. Her tone is not any softer than it had been when he first stormed in twenty minutes ago, reeking of booze and regret. He does not doubt how sober he is at this point. Nothing is more sobering than having a conversation about _feelings _with _her. _"You are a foolish man."

A small sniffle-like noise forces its way past his lips as her delicate, cold hands run up his neck and cup his jaw, tilting his face down. He's always been so much taller. "I know," he mutters. "I fell in love with you, didn't I?"

She chuckles. There's no mirth. There's not even any sadness. It's just a sound. "I don't know why."

"That's the point." He finally brings himself to look her in the eye. "That's what it is. It's irrational and stupid and it's not something I can fix."

She frowns faintly, then looks back up to him. "You know I won't pretend I grasp what you're saying anymore."

He nods and the heartbreak is as evident in his features as his cobalt blue hair. "You were very convincing in the beginning," he says sadly but still smiling.

She smiles too, just a little quirk of the lips before shaking her head and breaking the eye contact. "No I wasn't. You're just stupid."

"Maybe."

She looks down at the hardwood and her bare feet, toe nails painted a light pink. "So you're leaving now?" The thought doesn't seem to upset her much.

"Yes." He turns, picking up the bag behind him. It's large but not as large as he thought it'd be. "Miku?"

"Yes?" she's turned away from him now, walked back to the counter with her wine and the cat she doesn't like to cuddle with. That's when it truly registers—the remnants of her touch on his skin from where she had been moments before. It's the final time she will ever touch him. It stings violently as if she's reached her hand into his chest and plucked his heart out like a petal from a flower. _Not fair, _he thinks. _How can you still feel nothing after everything? _His eyes feel heavy with the strangling presence of tears.

"Can I ask you one more thing?" He rests his hand on the door handle, not fully confident he's capable to make the move unless he already has one foot in the grave, so to speak.

"I guess," she says softly. Her face is hidden though he knows what it looks like from memory, her singular expression bored into his mind forever. She left a permanent handprint in his eyes.

"Will you miss me?"

Faintly she laughs. "If I answered…" she turns to him, blank as ever, "you wouldn't be able to leave."

"Oh." His hand twitches as hot tears spill out over his eye lids.

"Goodbye, Kaito."

"Yeah. Later."

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